News
from Observation Post #6
May 10: Great day for whales. In our first cow/calf pair sighting we we heard blows and saw flukes and two BREACHES. In the second pair we saw rolling, and it was hard to tell if we saw a pec of the calf or the side of its fluke. Our single whale was a juvenile that fluked a few times and did a bubble-blast once. Our last cow/calf pair were low profile, but we could see the side-by-side prints. May 9: Our only sighting did not show up until 4:30 p.m. They were a fairly low profile cow/calf pair that were about one-half mile off shore. We now have more cow/calf pairs than last season and we have seen more cow/calf pairs than 10 of the last 24 seasons. May 7: Our 5 p.m. cow calf pair was about one-quarter mile off shore and the calf was riding on mom’s back as they were milling just beyond the kelp bed. May 6: Our one cow/calf pair came at noon today. They were slow moving and very close to shore. The mom had a lot of white on the top of her flukes so we could really see her underwater. While they were right down in front of us we saw the calf switching from one side of the mom to the other. It was a good size calf. May 2: While we are having a low season for total northbound whales, we now have more cow/calf pairs than nine of the last twenty-four seasons. May 1: We heard blows on both of the cow calf pairs; they were in very close. We could see the calf riding on mom’s right pec for two blows. They were visible under water. The two pairs came between 8:30 and 9:30 this morning. April 30: We found our first cow/calf pair by the mom breaching. She breached twice. We saw the calf when they got down below us and we could hear the blows, then the calf breached on our last sighting of this pair. April 29: The pair of gray whales that showed up about 4 p.m. breached 4 times. April 26: Great day for gray whale cow/calf pairs. Two of the sightings came in to below the fence and the mom fluked on one sighting. Two pairs milled. They were rolling and turning, but once they reached whale rock they moved further off shore. April 21: Our two gray whale cow/calf pairs were low profile, and quite challenging to track. We had a pod of three EXTREMELY large gray whales; these all had blows that shot upward so high that we first thought they must belong to a larger whale species! April
19: All four cow/calf pairs passed very close
to shore. California sea lions accompanied the first pair.
This cow/calf pair milled for about 30 minutes; the highlight
of the day was a spyhop by this calf. Two cows
fluked (cows with calves rarely fluke). April 13: Our first sighting was a close in cow/calf pair. We saw flukes on the mom. April 12: Our first sighting was the cow calf pair. The calf fluked, and its flukes were curled and pointed. Our second sighting was a stealth whale. Then we had a “one blow whale” and the last gray whale of the day was a large whale. That all happened by twelve noon and we saw no gray whales after that. April 11: Our first sighting was at 6:15 this morning. The whales was very close to shore and we saw flukes. The second sighting was about 10:30 a.m. and that was our cow calf pair. They were also close to shore and the mom fluked. April
10: Our first sighting was
about 10 a.m. It was a cow calf pair close to shore.
The mom's blow made a nice rainbow. We then waited until almost
4 p.m. when the rest of the whales started to come. The first
sighting was a pair of showy whales that milled not
far off shore. At one point one whale came up with its rostrum resting on the
side of the other whale, very different behavior. While we were watching the
showy whales another whale that started out low profile came
straight
in toward shore and milled. Then we found
a juvenile that was below the fence. It milled in the surf and then went around
the kelp to head off. April 7: Our sightings all came in pairs. The first sighting was a cow/calf pair about one-quarter mile off shore, low profile. The next sighting (2 adults) was also close to shore. Both of these sightings were between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. April 6: We had sea lions interacting with gray whales! The first was a cow/calf pair that were led by two to three sea lions, one of which kept going behind and next to the whales. April 2: Yes we had a southbound gray today. It was a big whale with good size blows. This is not unusual. In fifteen of the last twenty one seasons we have had southbound whales later than today. The latest was in 1999 when we saw a southbound whale on May 9th. March 24: All of our whales were in close today, many of them just above the fence. A pod of five whales that were wonderful to watch. They were one of the rolling pods close to shore. March 23: We saw seven whales closer than one quarter mile off shore, many of those just above the fence. Then we spotted four that were over three miles away and the rest were somewhere between one to two miles off shore. One sighting that was three and a half miles off shore we watched for over two hours. That’s a lot of time with binoculars glued to your head. March 20: Our first sighting today was a cow/calf pair. They were low profile and the calf was on the inside. Our next two sightings came at about the same time and were difficult to see, one was barely over the fence and we could see that the whale was small and had a totally white head. Five of the ten sightings were over a mile and a half off shore with one of them being two and a half miles out. We had six whales in one pod and we could see rolling, pecs and milling. They separated and then joined up and then separated again. March 19: We only had two sightings until we got to 11:30am and then the rush of whales started. They came by in singles, twos, threes and even a pod of five. Most of the sightings were close to shore, not far above the fence. Our last sighting was about two and a half miles away and the whales were rolling so much that it seemed like we always saw one pec in the air on each surfacing. They also had a large pod of common dolphins swimming all around them for a short while. March 18: Three of the ten sightings today had three whales in them. On one sighting we saw a huge splash, which means we missed a breach. March 16: Five of the 13 sighting came after 5pm. All of the whales came in to less than a half mile off shore, and some were about a quarter mile out. We had two pods of three whales, three pods of two whales and the rest were singles. There were high winds with lots of white caps, so there may have been more whales. March 11: Six sightings and most were close to shore. At about 2:30pm we saw some splashes; when we looked in the scope we found an ORCA flying out of the water! They were a little over 2.5 miles from us, moving fast and leaping out of the water. We had just heard from the Voyager that they were tracking a southbound whale so we knew they were in the area. We radioed the Voyager and got them on the orcas. We watched as the large male came up behind the boat and then splashed out of the water just in front of the boat. We then lost the orcas as they went into the Santa Monica Bay. We learned that there were nine females and one male. The gray whale predators are back! March 9: Nine northbounders! One whale was so close to shore that we had trouble seeing around the people who were standing down by the fence. We saw the whale under water. March 8: We saw our first northbound cow/calf pair for the season! It was confirmed by the Voyager (a whale watch boat). We have seen cow/calf pairs by this time or even earlier in prior seasons. These are dates of early cow/calf pairs:
March 5: Don’t these whales know it is March and they should be going north by now? The southbound whales were between one-half and three-fourths of a mile off shore. March 4: Our first whale today was a large southbound whale. We now have more southbound whales than five of the last twenty-four seasons. When we look at the southbound cow/calf pairs, we have more than 12 of the last 24 seasons. We matched one season and were only shy by one pair to match another season. March 2: Our one whale came at 4 pm today. We could hear all of the whale watch boats talking about this one whale making its way toward us. The whale fluked a few times. A power boat came rushing up to where the whale had just gone down, so when the whale came up again it made a major change of direction before it started to head west out toward Point Dume. Feb. 18: Our ONE whale, a northbounder, came at about 8:30 am. We saw its back, a print, and then some blows. It was less than a mile off shore and we watched it for 25 minutes. (See graph at lower right to compare this season with past seasons.) Feb. 16: We are officially in the turnaround period, now that we saw more northbound whales than southbound! Feb. 14: The cow/calf pair were accompanied by two medium size whales. We watched them for over 2 hours. They milled, rolled, spy hopped and we heard the blows from the mom. We saw pecs and sides of flukes. The cow/calf pair split off for a while and the the other pair caught up with them again. At one point, just after we saw a lot of rolling, mom flicked her flukes and splashed them down hard in what looked like an aggressive manor. The pair seemed to let the cow/calf pair alone after that. Feb. 6: Most of today’s whales were very close to shore. Of the seven sightings four were just above the fence and two were only a short distance away. They were all within one third mile off shore. We saw a couple of sea lions in among the whales. Feb. 3: With 30 whales southbund, this was our best day for gray whales this season — and we had terrible weather (wind and rain), so there were probably more whales that we did not see. We now have more whales southbound than the entire season for the 1990-91 and 1994-95 census. We also have more cow/calf pairs than the total cow/calves in 12 of the last 24 seasons. So we may be below average, but we have passed a number of seasons. See graphs >>
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